1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to navigation devices. More particularly, it relates to location based services (LBS), and navigation services based on predictive traffic data.
2. Background of the Related Art
When traveling for business or leisure, a challenge always remains as how to gauge when to depart an origin to arrive at a destination on time. This challenge exists for business travelers who must attend a meeting on time, catch a flight, etc. Likewise, this challenge exists for non-business travelers, such as vacationers, who must arrive at an event, a dinner reservation, pick up children from a day care center or school, etc. In unfamiliar surroundings and roadways, the unknown factor that can cause delays greatly increases. People are either late or too early and must kill time. Traffic conditions only compound the problems associated with navigation timing to avoid being either late or too early.
Current technologies include traffic prompts or alerts, which do little to help a user determine when to leave for a given destination. Alerts may also describe conditions on unfamiliar roadways, but such information's impact is all but undecipherable and meaningless except to the local commuter. Alerts provide granular road-specific information, but what this information means in terms of an Estimated Time of Travel (ETT) and a resultant Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA), to a specific destination is unknown. If a user is unfamiliar with the local roadways, the impact on ETT and the resultant ETA is unknown.
Navigation products today include real time traffic, and may generate alternate routes around adverse traffic conditions. However, this capability is useful only once the user has started driving on a route. In unfamiliar locations to unfamiliar destinations, the question still remains from a planning perspective of when a user should begin a drive. A user may desire to known what the drive time for a given route would be several hours from now. A user may want to know if they have multiple meetings in different locations, when to depart each location to insure that they arrive in a timely manner, not late and preferably not too early.